Memeorandum

July 23, 2012

Penn State Gets Zombie Sentence

It is not quite the 'death sentence' for Penn State football, but they will be among the walking dead for quite a few years.

And PSU will vacate its victories from 1998 to 2011. So the NCAA is rewriting the past? One might think that the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. But an immediate consequence of this vacation will be that Joe Paterno is dropped from the record books as the winningest Division 1 college football coach ever.

My hope was that the NCAA would punish the Penn State Administration but not the current roster of players; the penalties announced seem to be oriented that way.

FWIW: I remember irritiating someone back in 1986 with my bold pronouncement that the NCAA, Fidel Castro, and the North Koreans were the three great unreformed dictatorships of our era, and that the NCAA was lijkely to outlast the other two. I'm still waiting! And still betting on the NCAA.

Some Democrats worry that the overhead built by the Obama camp over the past 15 months will prove impossible to sustain. Unless fundraising picks up, the Obama campaign may enter the season’s final stretch confronting hard choices: paring salaries, scaling back advertising or pulling out of swing states in a bid to control costs, these Democrats say.

The president spent twice as much as Mr. Romney in June, as his campaign purchased more TV ads, paid more than twice as many employees and spent millions of dollars on public-opinion polls, federal records show.

June was the second month in a row that Mr. Obama’s campaign dipped into the red, while the president was outraised by the Romney campaign. In May and June combined, the Obama campaign spent 20% more than it took in, records show.

Mr. Romney and his party have now socked away more money than Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee. Mr. Romney banked $170 million as of June 30, compared with $147 million for the president.

Some Democrats? Eye roll. Well only the ones with a function cortex and a calculator I guess. That might rule out several I could name...

That's kind of what I'm thinking. Why is it okay to punish the players on the roster from 1998 to 2011 but not the present ones? Are those from 98 to 11 guilty of something different than the players on the roster in 2012?

A forfeit is a loss and what the NCAA has done is force PSU to forfeit the games for their actions. I dont have a problem with it, but the $60 MM and missing 4 bowl games will hurt big time and may take the university a long time to recover. Who will play for a place that can not under any circumstances go to a bowl game for your entire eligibility? I bet existing players will be allowed to transfer without sitting out a year too.

Selecting a punishment for institutional abuses of the past is nearly always unfair to the present descendants of the abusers. Slavery and discrimination against persons of African heritage people in the nineteenth century was odious. At the time, however, my ancestors were peasants in Europe. How does affirmative action making it easier for some in the present to get into elite colleges than it is for my children right the wrongs of 150 years ago? Often there is no remedy that is just.

Get the popcorn popped, the carnage may be better than a day at the Coliseum:

“Facing an uphill battle to retake control of the House from Republicans, about one third of Democratic House members are refusing to pay any dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Another 109 members have made only partial payments.”

I think the math leaves around 20 to maybe 30 paying the full amount. Hahahahaha

My personal opinion is the entire football program at PSU should have been gutted. There are always innocent people who are punished for the actions of others. The innocent kids that were raped, for instance.

TomM-- in the hierarchy of sports gangsterism, the NCAA is only third-- behing the IOC and FIFA. Those 2 are worse criminal enterprises as they are international-worldwide rackets.

The current PSU footballers? As GMAX points out they'll be free to tranfer schools and play immediately as free agents. The NCAA can do that as a racketeering monopoly. The hundreds of other PSU scholarship athletes in olympic type sports athletes at PSU? crew, wrestling, track, gymnastics?-- they'll disappear as the giant cash machine known a PSU football dries up.

The fact Michael Mann remains on the Penn State payroll indicates Penn State remains as corrupt as Duke wrt willful blindness regarding scum on faculty. The air brushing of records by the NCAA is consonant with its status as a politburo intent upon retaining an unjustified image.

The NCAA saw what the Death Penalty did to SMU which still has not recovered. They are unlikely to impose that on an institution again in my lifetime. It remains to be seen, but I am betting this will be almost as large a burden on a program. Perhaps a PSU can ride it out where an upstart like SMU could not, but I am skeptical. I think this is the death penalty with a different name.

NK, I meant Meyer would be there to entice current blue chippers to transfer at no penalty. When he was at Florida I heard he had a clause in his contract that he could break the contract to go to Notre Dame (there were some idiots who though fat Chollie Weis was a better hire than UM) or tOSU so he's probably where he'll remain the rest of his coaching life.

For those who find the NCAA rules arcane and confusing, it is all of that. Having had three scholar athletes at Division I schools, the NCAA normally makes a student athlete sit out a year of eligibility upon a transfer. Waiver can be requested and sometimes are granted but not always.

But as I understand it, which is consistent with what I speculated, every existing PSU football player gets a waiver if they want to go somewhere else. And if they stay, they apparently dont have to play but will get their full scholarship anyway ( football only has full scholarships and walk on nonscholarship athletes no partially like the Olympic sports ). So the existing athletes will have options. How the coach fields a competititive team for the next three years is a very good question.

NK-OSU brings in a fortune training teachers and "coaches" to ensure that many school districts spend a fortune creating reading problems and then expensively and unsuccessfully remediating them. Cha-ching and the vacant minds to boot.

Barack Obama averaged 46.8% job approval during his 14th quarter in office, a slight improvement from 45.9% in quarter 13. Compared with recently elected presidents, his 14th quarter average is most similar George W. Bush's in 2004.

So they're trying to suggest he's no worse off than Bush. But they're using averages to do it.

Per Gallup GWB averaged 47.9 in his 14th quarter and increased more than 2 points in his 15th quarter which put him over 50%.

Obama averaged 46.8 in his 14th quarter. He'd have to increase more than 3 points next quarter to put him over 50.

Obama April average was 47%. His May average was 47%. His June average was 46%. So he's moving down where Bush was moving up.

And economic confidence is way down from where it was in May, when Obama last averaged 47%. It's at the lowest since January.

None of this makes any sense to me. AFAICT, it's not a football program issue, it's a sexual predator issue (and failure to report same). If he'd been in the law school, would the ABA downrank the school?

IMO, the logical corrective action is to put the various perps in jail, and sue 'em (including JoePA's estate, if that's allowable). The NCAA doesn't strike me as the proper arbiter of a sex abuse scandal.

OT, but can someone from the midwest kindly tell me the dial settings for conservative political talk radio stations in NE, KS, MO, and thereabouts. My grandson is driving alone, coast to coast (Oregon to GA) and today is trying to make it from North Platte NE to St. Louis, MO. Says he's been around the dial several times but has not found political talk in progress. So naturally he phoned his granny in Hawaii to find out! heh. Thanks.

Gallup 2004-2008-- the main Gallup differences between 2004 and 2012 are: 1. Bush's 2003 taxcuts were resulting in an improving economy in 2004 (June 2004 unemployment = 5.6% and dropping) and 2. GWB actively courted Indie voters-- 'Bam has given up on Indie voters and is rallying the base and in fact trying to suppress right leaning Indie voters. Very different sitautions.

AB:My grandson is driving alone, coast to coast (Oregon to GA) and today is trying to make it from North Platte NE to St. Louis, MO.

We made that drive in the reverse direction a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, we didn't listen to radio.

Hmmm, and then presumably he'll make it from St. Louis to the Georgia coast in one day? A little out of the way it would seem for him to swing by the hit house for wayward travelers . . . but if he needed a place to crash for a night and/or a meal, my (garage) door is always open.

Ranger-- unfortunately Gas prices will be going the wrong way for all of us; the Fed will debase the Dollar again sooner than later and that will drive up crude prices. Unfortunately, the midwest drought, worst since '88, will drive up food prices across the board. The election will be held in the environment of increaing gas and food prices.

Nobody says that a murderer shouldn't be punished because his uninvolved wife will suffer

Sue and Steve seem to be of the opinion that the uninvolved wife should also be prosecuted, because she should take the bad with the good and there are always innocents who are punished for the actions of others.

Hmmm. How many of the now punished, past players at PSU knew - in whisper campaigns - to stay the hell away from Sandusky? I bet quite a few.

If they had an inkling, if they heard rumors, if the whispering was rampant through the football program - I don't feel sorry for any of them. Maybe they did not witness it first hand - but if they talked about it and did nothing only for the sake of the program and Paterno - screw them, I don't care how well they played, how many times they won - whatever. They allowed a monster to claim more victims and they should all have the image of Sandusky repeatedly raping young men play through their minds incessantly.

I don't have any sympathy for anyone involved in the football program at PSU up until Sandusky's ass got caught.

Every school in the nation better have their shit together from now on.

Never forget that stat sampling is only so precise. Any given sample can be an outlier, and the MOE even on a quarterly sample is still probably around 2%, meaning statistically he aint going anywhere currently and if Porch is correct the monthlys seem to be trending downward no upward.

He has not been above 50% in RASMUSSEN since sometime in 2009, I seem to recall, its behind the firewall currently can not access.

I have no sympathy for PSU, but the hypocrisy of the NCAA (and the Big 10, etc) is galling.

Is the NCAA or the Big 10 going to be refunding any of the broadcasting fees or sponsprship money that they received for Penn State games over the last 13 years (or that's been negotiated in contracts going forward)?

Is ESPN, ABC and any other networks that broadcast Penn State games and collected advertising revenue going to return it?

Are any of the other schools going to refund money to ticket holders who paid to watch when Penn State played there?

My point was why punish one set of players and not another? Nothing more, nothing less. Unless bgates is reading it. Then I'm for putting innocent wives in jail and ripping their fingernails out for good measure.

I do agree with Cecil @ 11:58 as well. I think the ability to go personally after the individuals who knew the abuse was going on and looked the other way would be both a better punishment and deterrent for the future than any other solution.

A $2 million judgement (or whatever amount would represent, say, 99% of their net worth and potential future income) against an individual University trustee or President or whomever would be far more likely to get the attention of others in similar positions than a $100 million judgement against the University that would ultimately be paid by alumni donations, tuition increases (and in the case of a public university like PSU, taxpayer dollars).

"There are 191 House Members. Subtract the 64 who haven’t paid any dues to the DCCC and 109 for those who have only paid a portion of them, that leaves 18 Members of Congress who have paid their dues in full."

The NCAA sanction will be the first of its kind. There is already some discussion about the NCAA's authority to do anything because there were no rules violations. Apparently, the NCAA believes it has the power to sanction, fine, suspend or othewise discipline a member school for being evil or, I suppose, naughty, in matters unrelated to the NCAA's rules.

I have no pity for Penn State and I think the football program should be either suspened or abolished, but on the basis of the general supervision of the Univeristy, not the perceived oversight of a private association whose authority is thin, at best.

Peter Kirsanow at the Corner does a succinct summation of the status of the race currently here:

the Obama campaign’s been spending campaign funds like the Obama administration spends tax dollars. The primary target of the spending is independent voters. Yet in last week’s CBS/NYT poll of registered voters, if the election were held today Obama would lose independents to Romney 47–35. Obama’s favorable/ unfavorable rating among independents is 28–52. After three and a half years in office, Obama won’t improve his favorability among independents constructively; it’s imperative that he sour them on Romney. So far, that hasn’t worked.

The CBS/NYT poll shows 56 percent of Republicans are enthusiastic about voting in November, compared to just 27 percent of Democrats. Given Obama’s furious recent pandering to Democratic constituencies — blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, issuing the HHS mandate, supporting gay marriage, gutting welfare reform, granting de facto amnesty to young illegal immigrants – the abysmal Democratic voter-enthusiasm figure must have Obama-campaign staffers wringing their hands. Although Obama has the advantages of incumbency and supportive media, his poll numbers consistently hit a ceiling below 50 percent.

Some Democrats worry that the overhead built by the Obama camp over the past 15 months will prove impossible to sustain. Unless fundraising picks up, the Obama campaign may enter the season’s final stretch confronting hard choices: paring salaries, scaling back advertising or pulling out of swing states in a bid to control costs, these Democrats say.

The Obama campaign has become a microcosm of the country .. they over spend ... they can't raise any more revenues ... what on God's good Earth makes anybody think that they would go to "confronting hard choices" ?